We're Unusually Excited For Today's Case-Shiller Housing Number

The Case-Shiller
housing number is always a pretty interesting report, as it's the
gold standard of home price indices.

We're probably even more interested in it today's, than normal,
however, because so many people are getting more bullish on
housing (something that's manifested itself in a stunning 35%
gain in the homebuilding ETF).

We're curious whether something similar is happening in prices,
and whether the year-over-year price declines are really starting
to abate for real.

Here's Nomura's 5-second forecast:

Case-Shiller house prices: We expect the
Case-Shiller 20-city home price index to show a 3.8% decline on a
year-over-year basis in August. Taking into account variations in
other home price indices over the June-August period, which have
already been reported by private research firms such as Zillow.com and
Core Logic, the year-over-year change rate of the index likely
improved in August from -4.1% in July.